


Let the City Pull You Under

by MadSeason (naive_wanderer)



Series: up in the city (until the stars lost the war) [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, CPTSD, First Kiss, First Time, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Underage Drinking, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25922413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naive_wanderer/pseuds/MadSeason
Summary: [He’ll wonder all that, later; but in this moment he kisses a boy who thinks he’s something other than he is, and clings to the bolt of revelation that strikes him in the dark: maybe nothing in life matters except grabbing onto whatever brief moments you have to feel good.]Before joining the Avatar, before choosing his path on the crossroads of destiny, and before he finds a poster for a missing bison, Crown Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation has a teenage affair in Ba Sing Se.Featuring wheat crime boy Jet and horrifically understanding parent man Uncle Iroh.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Jet/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: up in the city (until the stars lost the war) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118519
Comments: 34
Kudos: 353





	Let the City Pull You Under

**Author's Note:**

> My brain, at some ungodly hour this week: What if Jet actually just chilled the hell out and learned something after getting owned by Sokka and Katara
> 
> Something I honestly never though I'd write, brought to you by the unbridled power of "I'm bisexual and therefore all the characters I like are also bisexual".

.

Former Crown Prince Zuko has his first real kiss in a utility closet on a refugee ferry to Ba Sing Se, when the boy called Jet leans in with one hand on the back of Zuko’s neck. Zuko lets him.

 _Lets him_ is probably too passive a way of putting it—Zuko guessed where this was going when Jet took his hand and pulled him along, and he’d made the decision to follow—but it’s not like Zuko actively does much. His nerve endings sing and his brain empties and he feels somehow _pleasant_ underneath the salt-stained clothes and the muscle aches and the resignation. He can’t remember the last time he felt _pleasant_. Maybe never.

“That’s good,” Jet mumbles between their mouths meeting, softly encouraging, like Zuko is a pupil being instructed. Zuko is too boneless to bristle at it, and in any case it’s true—he has no experience to draw from. Jet is clearly the one who knows what he’s doing, and Zuko has had time to come to grips with the fact that he is not above being taught a new skill. Certainly not when it makes him feel alive like he hasn’t, before, maybe ever.

Zuko will muse, later—in the shabby apartment he’ll share with his uncle that will nonetheless be a step up from his recent life—that maybe he was never really meant to burn brightly. Maybe he was never meant to struggle except to fail. Maybe he was always meant to have his inner flame smothered, quietly, anonymously, under layers of rough-spun clothes and the press of crowds, their hands and their smells and their eyes looking and not-looking.

(Zuko’s never exactly denied that he can be dramatic).

He’ll wonder all that, later; but in this moment he kisses a boy who thinks he’s something other than he is, and clings to the bolt of revelation that strikes him in the dark: maybe nothing in life matters except grabbing onto whatever brief moments you have to feel good.

* * *

In another life, Jet sees Uncle Iroh firebend his tea at the dock, and he and Zuko don’t speak again until they’re fighting in an alleyway with Zuko clutching swords that aren’t his. In another life, Zuko watches him get dragged away by the Dai Li and feels justified, and then a surge of rage and shame and fear that he can’t quite place, and then he moves on.

In this life, Jet doesn’t see a thing, and Zuko drop-kicks most of his own pride into the gutter in a fit of customer-service-based despair. In this life, Jet keeps calling Zuko “Li” and slinks around the tea shop in the lower ring where Zuko has started working, like he’s a customer.

“This is getting creepy,” Zuko remarks when Jet appears for the third time that week. “I already said no to joining your stupid gang when we got off the boat.”

“Harsh.” Jet mimes an arrow through his heart. “Still think you passed up a major opportunity, but I’m over that.”

Zuko frowns. “Then why do you keep coming here?”

“What can I say?” Jet grins. “You’re a great kisser.”

He says it so damn loud.

“Li!” Pao shouts from the back of the store, “we have other customers waiting!”

Zuko wants to snap back something about how Pao wouldn’t even _have_ customers without Uncle, but he has learned that tea-servers can’t do that. Tea-servers can’t do _anything_ but bow politely and get shouted at and remember complicated orders and—

Jet is laughing at him. “You sure you made the right decision at the dock?”

Zuko does a completely sub-par job of hiding his reddening face with his shoulders and hisses, “Are you even ordering anything? Do you have any money?”

“Nah.” 

“Then _get out!”_

Jet stands and turns, and though the smile hasn’t left his face he looks genuinely rueful. “That a no, sweetheart?” His voice is, mercifully, quiet. Zuko knows what he’s asking.

“It is if you keep calling me that,” Zuko snaps. Then, before he can talk himself out of it, “I’m done at nine.”

The grin turns warmer. “Allright, Li.”

Jet turns and leaves. Zuko doesn’t watch him and doesn’t think about what he’s just agreed to, because it doesn’t matter and he doesn’t care. He goes back to tamping down his emotions under carefully-balanced tea trays and carefully neutral words as the midday rush starts in earnest. Zuko does not even have the words for how violently he dislikes the midday rush.

 _Allright, Li_. It’s not even Zuko’s real name; it shouldn’t send that awful (exciting) spark down his spine, hearing it in this guy’s mouth, but it does. 

Zuko _goes out_ in the evening after his shift ends. It’s the riskiest thing he’s done since becoming a refugee, and isn’t _that_ kind of pathetic, compared to his life before? But he can’t have that life back now, so. He goes out.

He finds Jet on the corner a block from the shop, leaning up against a wall with his hands in his pockets. There are still a lot of people about, heading home, finishing errands, doing whatever else it is people in the lower ring do in the remaining two hours before curfew.

Zuko and Jet fall into step together, following the general stream of people heading into the square.

“I meant to ask,” says Jet, walking entirely too close (just the right amount of close) beside him, “a guy like you, how have you never...? You know.”

He makes a kind of obscene gesture with his hands that Zuko pointedly looks away from. “I’m sixteen, I’m not _old_. Not everyone does... whatever it is you spend your time doing.”

“Guess that’s true.”

“It’s not like I’ve had a wealth of opportunities,” Zuko goes on, defensively. “People lining up to—to—” his mouth clamps down on the rest of his words. Jet smiles.

“That so? Why?”

Zuko points to his scar and shrugs. It’s not the real reason, of course, but it may as well be, and he’ll believe it.

“Really!” Jet drawls. “That’s what made me look at you in the first place.”

Zuko knows that. He isn’t sure how he feels about it, but it led to the utility closet, and now this meeting, so does it matter? He’s not going to overthink things like this, not anymore.

Well. He’s going to _try_ not to overthink. “Why do you care, anyway? Didn’t seem like you had any complaints on the ferry.”

They’ve moved beyond the square, and wherever they’re walking, the crowd is starting to thin. Jet grins, all teeth. “You’re right, I didn’t. And I liked showing you the ropes. You’re such a quick study.”

Zuko notes the curl of anticipation somewhere in his belly almost as if he’s a spectator outside his own body.

It’s not like Jet is blindingly attractive. He _is_ attractive, sure, but so are many people Zuko hasn’t let his eyes linger on.

“Wonder what else I could teach you?”

It’s that he says things like that.

Zuko’s face gets _hot_ , but it doesn’t feel bad, so he keeps the reflexive embarrassment to himself. He tries to think of something— _anything_ —to say that walks a line closer to ‘flirtatious’ than ‘outright belligerent’, but can’t come up with a damn thing other than, “You don’t need to flatter me,” which sounds so utterly petulant that he wants to crawl off somewhere to waste away.

But Jet doesn’t react, just guides him down a side street, somewhere comfortingly dark and deserted, with a hand on the small of his back. “It’s okay that you’re shy.”

“I’m not _shy_.”

“Then you’re serious.” Jet’s half-smile is unwavering, his tone just a bit patronizing. “That’s fine. I like that.”

Zuko’s been moved up against a wall. He’s pretty sure it’s damp, but his Earth Kingdom clothes are probably thick enough to keep it from being a problem. If not, he doesn’t particularly care. That’s why he’s here, anyway—to not care, to look at and touch someone who makes his pulse race and not think about why, to just _stop_ for a bit.

Jet kisses him without any pretense. Zuko lets him.

“Stop being sad,” Jet murmurs in a distracted, breathless sort of way when their mouths separate. He moves impossibly closer.

“I’m not sad.” Jet’s lips move down to Zuko’s neck, and whatever else Zuko might have said dies in his throat. He lets Jet move as he will, and supposes ‘sad’ is as good a word for it as any.

After a while Jet’s hands snake underneath his clothes, as unfamiliar an experience as the first kiss on the ferry, and just as thrilling. Zuko lets him do that too.

* * *

If Zuko could have picked ideal moment in his life to be having a sexual awakening—because, upon much mortified self-reflection, that’s what it is, and he’s had several bouts of aggressive mental backflipping and deep-breathing in between waiting tables to come to grips with it—it wouldn’t be now. But it’s not like there were any _other_ times that it would have been convenient. He never used to have the headspace for things this trivial, but now it’s too dangerous to be himself and this is one of the only things that feels safe to think about. At least it’s “normal for his age.”

Uncle wants him to be normal. 

Whatever. He’s not royalty anymore, he’s not anyone important, he’s just a tea-server. He doesn’t have to argue or struggle or make important decisions, even if he wants to, and he can do what he likes when he’s done with work. He and Jet are both around the same age and they’re both agreeing to it.

Besides, Zuko’s been pretty firmly establishing ‘talking about the past’ as off-limits—he’s not _stupid_ —and, at least so far, Jet’s been fine with it. It’s not like they have nothing else to talk about, or really much time that they want to waste talking.

  
  


* * *

The days in Ba Sing Se wear on, monotonous, and Zuko stops having it in him to despise his life here with so much ferocity. Maybe, one day, he’ll even be okay with it, if he tries hard enough. Maybe one day.

He has nightmares most nights. It doesn’t make any sense.

Zuko wakes one morning and, as if in a trance, shuffles to the bathroom mirror and covers the left side of his face with one hand.

 _There I am_ , he thinks, the voice in his own head small and very far away. He stares hard into his own reflection, imagining something symmetrical and whole. The hand on his face feels like it’s burning up. _There you are, Prince Zuko_. 

He drops his hand, looks into the mirror again. Something huge and horrible and wet fills his ribcage.

“Nephew,” his uncle says from the doorway, and Zuko turns and quickly pushes past him before he can catch the expression on his face. He dresses for the day.

“We don’t have work today,” Uncle reminds him gently when he reaches for the door.

“I’m just taking a walk,” Zuko tells him.

It’s a bright day. The air is dry. It would be a good day for sword practice, to stretch rest-sore muscles and feel the grounding weight of the dao handles in each hand, if he were allowed to do such things freely in this city. 

It would be a good day for fire, except he’s not allowed to have those days right now.

Some time gets lost; Zuko doesn’t become aware of where he is or what he’s doing until he looks around and sees that he’s on the roof of his own apartment building, with the sun beating down bright enough to burn. He used to do this sort of thing a lot, two years ago, three years ago, but it hasn’t happened in a while.

It isn’t until the sun has crept low on the western horizon and the dusk-calls of birds have started up that Zuko returns to the apartment. He feels too big as he walks through the door, smothered by the walls and ceiling and floor even with all the windows thrown open. He can’t tell if it’s better that he’s here, right now, in this lower ring apartment, or if it would have been better back on his ship. He can’t really remember how days like this were, on the ship, but Zuko isn’t sure how much he can trust his own memory, period.

“How was your walk? Did you eat at all today?” Uncle asks, as if Zuko hadn’t just disappeared for eight hours. He sets something hot down on the table, but Zuko isn’t hungry, is too nauseated for food. “You’ll feel better once you eat,” Uncle insists. “I want you to try a little.” So Zuko does. He tastes nothing but salt.

He sits on the mat on the floor after dinner and feels nothing, too, nothing but the buzz in his muscles and the tightness in his face, like pins and needles. He wants to walk out of his skin, leave his warped flesh there for someone else to deal with.

Uncle sits next to him and tells him stories that Zuko has heard a hundred times before. Zuko hums at what he thinks are the right moments. When evening falls in earnest, Uncle touches his shoulder, and Zuko jumps as if he’s been electrocuted, moves his hands to pull fire from the air—

But Uncle stops him, pulls his hands down before they have a chance to ignite. “Zuko,” he says, and he hasn’t called Zuko by name in so long, not since they came to Ba Sing Se. It drags him back down to earth, breaks him in half on impact.

“Sorry,” Zuko gasps, letting himself sink all the way to the floor. The wood is cool on his forehead. There’s a hand on the back of his neck, in his hair. “Sorry, sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” says his uncle, like he has many times before, but that’s always been too difficult to bear. Zuko will be sorry for the rest of his life. It’s the only thing he can cling to.

* * *

The following week is a wash of shame and anger, which is nothing new. After days like that, of emptiness and despair, it’s what Zuko has come to expect. That’s the cycle, that’s how it always has been since he was forced to leave home and how it probably always will be.

The second he’s done with work, Zuko goes out to find Jet on the street corner they’ve planned to meet. The boy in question is standing too-casual beneath a street lamp, smoking something. That’s new.

“Hey, Li,” he drawls as Zuko approaches. “You’re early.”

Zuko says, “Do you have—can we—where do you live?”

Jet raises his eyebrows, blowing smoke. “Where do I live?”

“Can we go there? Alone?” Zuko says, pointedly. 

Jet’s eyebrows raise higher. He takes a final drag and drops the roll to the street, stomping it out under his foot. He says, “Come on then, sweetheart,” in a tone like cracked leather, and Zuko doesn’t waste energy on a retort.

Jet holds onto his wrist the whole way there, his grip light but hot as they wind through side streets and up several staircases to the front door. Zuko feels like he’s clinging to a taut string about to snap for the entire walk. 

He doesn’t know whether Jet lives alone—the cramped apartment has only one bedroll on the floor, though that doesn’t mean much, and Zuko hasn’t seen either of his strange friends since the ferry—but they’re alone enough, for now. Zuko stands stock-still as Jet closes the door behind them and turns, shedding his jacket. The air is thick.

“Not to kill the mood, or anything, but you look like you’re marching off to your execution,” Jet comments, with the first faint sign of concern that Zuko’s ever heard from him. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Zuko answers. He’s never been honest about that before, not with anyone, but Jet doesn’t actually know him so he figures it’s safe enough.

Jet frowns. He looks, for the first time Zuko has seen, uncomfortable. “Look, I don’t like having this kind of conversation, but I’m not exactly the kind of guy who—I mean, I don’t do this sort of thing when someone _really_ doesn’t want to.”

“I want to,” Zuko says immediately. 

“Really,” Jet deadpans. “You look like you’re gonna faint.”

Zuko’s face goes hot, as it tends to. “I’m _fine,_ do you need to _interview_ me first? Do I have to _prove_ it?”

Jet holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, it’s okay to be nervous.”

“I’m not—” Zuko starts, but that’s enough of a lie that even he is fully aware he can’t pull it off. He lets out a shaky breath. “I just need—I don’t want to talk, I just want to, I want you to—to—please.”

Zuko doesn’t know what else to say. He’s worked himself up, strung out from the past few days and this weird, heavy excuse for existing that he has to try and accept, and he knows he looks it. He wants to feel something else, anything else, for a while. 

Jet puts a hand on his arm, grounding. Something in his face changes, turns a bit serious.

“Okay,” he says, crowding into Zuko’s space, and Zuko finally feels like he can breathe. Jet’s hands slide down Zuko’s sides, warm even through the layers. He smells faintly of smoke. “Okay, I get it. I got you.”

Zuko’s heartbeat demands attention the rest of the night. He can feel it hammering when his clothes get discarded, when Jet says “I got you” again very close to his ear, when his mind finally goes blissfully, powerfully blank. Zuko lets it.

* * *

Here’s a brand new experience: creeping into work late in yesterday’s rumpled clothes, sleep-deprived, after getting lost trying to find the way because _hormones_ made it too difficult to pay attention to the route the night before. Zuko isn’t certain he even _had_ hormones until recently.

The sleep deprivation isn’t new, but everything else definitely is.

“Nephew!” his uncle bellows too cheerfully the instant Zuko enters the shop, and Zuko immediately tries to hide himself in the pantry. “So good to see you again!”

Pao drags him out again too soon, puts him to work waiting tables.

Zuko tries to avoid Uncle Iroh the rest of the day, which is difficult considering he has to bring the orders to the back for Uncle to make—which very pointedly involves speaking to him—but it’s a valiant effort. Zuko’s still so damn embarrassed by the time they get home that he can’t bring himself to look anywhere within a foot of his uncle’s face.

“I’m not angry,” Uncle says good-naturedly as he closes the front door, which is more mortifying than anything else he could have said, really. “It would just be considerate if you would let me know when you expect to be out for the night.”

Zuko wonders if turtleducks are able to hide their entire heads in their shells. If they can, he’d like to be one about now. “I won’t do it again. I didn’t realize it had gotten so late.”

That’s true—by the time it had occurred to Zuko to return home, it was well past the city’s curfew, and he didn’t quite trust his legs to carry him there as sneakily as he could have under normal circumstances. He also didn’t want to.

His uncle smiles—which is, frankly, devastating—and says, “Just let me know, next time,” which is even worse. He shuffles off to make _more tea_ after they’ve just left their job at a _tea shop_ and Zuko shuts himself in the bedroom, never to be seen again, or so he hopes.

He kind of wants to die. Not in the real way, but maybe in the teenager way. It’s a new feeling.

  
  


Zuko comes back out an hour or so later, because the other shoe is sure to drop and the suspense and uncertainty is killing him, and he likes to think he’s the kind of person who faces things head-on. Also, he’s hungry. 

Uncle is watering the plants. Zuko tries to creep toward the cupboards.

“Nephew,” Uncle says, not turning around, in the tone of voice he uses when he wants to have some kind of semi-serious Talk but doesn’t want to scare Zuko off. Damn it all, Zuko was _right_ , here’s the other shoe. “Don’t take this the wrong way—”

“Just say it,” Zuko says miserably, giving up and slumping down at the table. There isn’t even any food ready and there’s nowhere to sit in the entire apartment except this stupid _table_ and the stupid _mat_ and Zuko hates it.

Uncle peers at him for a few moments around the plant. “What exactly do you think I’m going to say?”

Zuko is so over games, so over being asked questions that are really entirely _different_ questions about _who he is_ or something equally as nebulous that he never knows the answer to. He shrugs, petulant. “That it’s not a good idea, or it’s dangerous, or that it’s—that you know who I’ve been... you know who it is, don’t you?”

Uncle puts down the watering can. “Well, I think I do.”

“And?”

“And that’s your business. It doesn’t have anything to do with what I wanted to talk about.”

Zuko—doesn’t know what to do with that. None of the adults in his life have ever made any sense. “You should be upset.”

He’s aware, somehow, that the air becomes very fragile, and that he’s the one making it that way. He never knows how to stop doing that once he’s started. 

Uncle Iroh walks over to the table and sits down across from him. “Why should I be upset?”

It isn’t fair, it really isn’t, that Zuko has to be the one to say it. “It’s been a boy, who I’ve been seeing, you know that, and you haven’t—you haven’t said anything about it.”

Uncle is silent for a long moment. Zuko feels vaguely sick. “Does it really bother you?” Uncle finally says, carefully.

It doesn’t, or he wouldn’t be doing it, but—“It’s not proper.”

Uncle doesn’t quite frown. The air still feels thin and electric. “You know by now that the rest of the world is not like the Fire Nation in that regard,” he starts, still in that same voice Zuko knows means he thinks he’s fragile. “It is accepted, in the Earth Kingdoms, to be with the type of person you choose, no matter who you are.”

“But I’m not _from_ the Earth Kingdom,” Zuko snaps, angry, suddenly, like he hasn’t been in weeks and weeks. The table rattles a bit with the force of his palm but he has the presence of mind to at least keep his voice down. “I’m not _Li_ , putting me here isn’t going to change who I am, I’m—I’m—I’m doing things I shouldn’t be doing and it doesn’t even matter to you!”

“Of course what you do matters to me,” Uncle says, blinking.

“Then why aren’t you mad?” Zuko pleads. “Why? Do you just not care? Do you not want me to do better? Do you not care that there’s something wrong with me?”

His uncle doesn’t move from his seat. “Zuko, there is nothing wrong with you.”

It’s the second time he’s said Zuko’s actual name in five days. The rope Zuko’s been hanging from all week snaps. “There _is!_ ” he yells, standing, and he’s shaking. “I’m being irresponsible, I didn’t plan any of this, I just don’t—I can’t—I used to be strong! I don’t even remember most of the other day, what was I doing? Was I just _on the roof_ the entire day? How is that normal? How is there not something wrong? Yesterday someone dropped a plate at the shop and I almost—I almost—”

He can’t get the words out. Uncle doesn’t ask what he almost did. Instead, he asks, still infuriatingly calm, “How long have you been feeling this way?”

Zuko has the incomprehensible urge to scream. He forces it down. “It doesn’t matter. It’s pathetic, it’s weak, I should be able to handle it by now.”

Uncle is starting to look _sad_ , which Zuko hates even more than his patience. He hates himself, too, for putting that look on his face. Uncle says, “My nephew, I do not think there is anything wrong with who you _are_. I think your reactions make perfect sense, given what has happened to you.”

Zuko’s vision almost goes white. “ _What’s_ happened to me?”

He isn’t aware that the candles are glowing much brighter until Uncle stands. “Nephew,” he says, evenly, “you must calm down.”

Zuko feels, for a moment, like he really might explode. Like he could spontaneously die, right here, in the real way, not the teenager-way, but the way he’s thought about in the dark too many times for comfort. The Zuko from the ship might have gone ahead and stomped off to do something self-destructive, but the Zuko in the Earth Kingdom lets his expression twist, for a moment, and then he looks around the room and works to even out his breaths until the candlelight fades down to a normal flicker. The Zuko in Ba Sing Se unclenches his fists and looks down at his shaking hands.

He says, “I’m going to bed.”

Uncle lets him.

  
  
  


Zuko comes back out _again_ around midnight, with his hands still shaking, and says, in a voice that sounds stiff and formal to his own ears, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

There’s a cold soup out on the table, and Zuko’s stomach rumbles. Uncle is playing a solitary game of pai sho. Zuko wonders when he sleeps. 

“I forgive you,” Uncle says, easily, as Zuko shuffles over and sits. “Do you forgive me?”

He pushes a bowl in front of Zuko, who blinks. “For what?”

“For not understanding how unhappy you’ve been.”

“I’m not,” Zuko argues impulsively, but when he thinks on it he supposes it’s not untrue. Even Jet, who always spoke with utter conviction, had called him ‘sad’, weeks ago. People he doesn’t know have been noticing it long before then. 

Zuko used to think it was because he was so obviously pathetic, a sign that he had to cling to pride and rise up against it, but now that he’s traveled as someone else he wonders if it isn’t because these people feel the same way, if they can see themselves reflected in him. The world is such a tiresome place to be, sometimes. “I don’t remember the last time I was happy,” he says, honestly.

Uncle makes a pained face that Zuko doesn’t like to see— _why_ did he think that was the right thing to say—so he speaks again before Uncle can remark. “I’m not a child anymore, Uncle, I should have been handling it myself instead of taking it out on you.”

Uncle stops moving pai sho tiles. He meets Zuko’s eyes. “My nephew, you should not have to handle it yourself. Why do you think I’m here?”

Zuko doesn’t want to keep dragging his uncle down. He thinks his heart might cave in. “I’m sorry.”

Uncle reaches across the table, touches Zuko’s arm. “I am an old man who can make his own choices. You must know, Prince Zuko, that I want to be here to help you.”

With a far-away horror, Zuko tries to keep the burn in his eyes from spilling over. He stares very hard at the table, at the food he still hasn’t touched. He wants to ask _why,_ but he’s been asking it since the start of his banishment and has never gotten an answer that makes sense.

Zuko’s trying, he’s been trying for his whole life, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever know how to be good.

  
  
  


Uncle doesn’t bring up whatever it was he wanted to talk about.

* * *

On a rare afternoon off, with the sun cramming itself in through Jet’s tiny, top-floor apartment windows, and a fog in his brain that won’t dissipate, Zuko lies half on top of the bedroll and allows Jet to trace the ragged edges of his scar with his fingertips.

When it gets to be too much—confused, emotional vomiting is not something Zuko wants to subject either of them to right now—Zuko grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away. Jet doesn’t put up a fight, just flops back down next to him.

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of it,” he says.

“I’m not,” Zuko lies.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s just a scar.”

“Okay, well, _did_ it hurt?”

“What kind of question is that?” Zuko snaps, sitting up. “It’s a burn on my face, what do you think? Stop being creepy.”

Jet shrugs from his place on the floor. He fumbles around in his pants pockets for a moment; pulls out some kind of cigarette and lighter. Zuko snatches both out of his hands and flings them out the window.

“Hey!”

“I’ll find you some more stupid grass to chew on, okay?” Zuko says through his teeth.

“What’s your fuckin’ problem?” Jet says mildly as he sits up, far too amused for someone who’s just been owned. “Now you’ve gone and thrown out my only lighter.”

Zuko sinks his head a little further into his knees. Something awful and nauseating like _I can be a good lighter_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he is nowhere near stupid enough or enamoured enough to say it. Even if he didn’t know what kind of reception that would get him, he doubts he’s smooth enough to pull it off. “I’ll go down and look for it later. Or I’ll get you a new one.”

Jet sighs in a very put-upon manner. He moves closer so Zuko can feel his breath on the side of his neck, and slides one hand up the back of Zuko’s thigh. “Don’t be mad, I just like it,” he says, nonchalantly. “It means something, that you have that and you’re still standing, you know?”

Agni, Spirits, _whatever_ , Zuko doesn’t know what he’s supposed to _do_ with the things people say to him. “What the _fuck_ would you know about what it means?”

“You could tell me.”

“Get over yourself,” Zuko spits. “I’m not telling you some sob story to fuel your weird rage boner, _okay?_ ”

Jet barks a laugh. It cuts a painfully clear path through the fog in Zuko’s brain, for just a moment. “Oh really? How’d you get it?”

He almost says it. It’s right there on his tongue, _My father, my father_ —and it scares him, how attraction to this boy he barely knows can come so close to yanking this sort of truth out of him, can make him feel so _angry_ again when the whole _point_ of these meetings was to feel the opposite—

“Hey, hey.” Jet’s hand is on his shoulder now instead, shaking him slightly. Zuko isn’t quite able to hide the sound of his sharp inhale, and mentally sends up a quick prayer of thanks that it’s still daylight, that there hadn’t been any candles lit for him to accidentally bend.

He pushes Jet’s hand off his shoulder.

“Didn’t mean to upset you,” Jet says, and Zuko scoffs.

“Yes, you did.”

Jet frowns. “I was trying to push your buttons, but I wasn’t trying to for real _upset_ you.” Zuko doesn’t turn. “I mean it, man. I’m just saying it’s good you survived.”

Zuko says, “I wish I hadn’t.” And that is—that is _far_ too honest. He hasn’t yet come to terms with the fact that he’s ever allowed a thought like that to cross his mind, let alone known that he could say it out loud, to someone else.

Jet shifts a little beside him. Zuko doesn’t turn to look. “You really wish that?”

Zuko unclenches his jaw. “No,” he says, which also feels far too honest.

Jet looks at him for a long moment. Then he gets to his feet and says, “You ever had wine?”

Zuko’s had weak wine, before, and sake, back on his ship, but nothing like the two pretty glass bottles Jet grabs from his crammed and cluttered shelf. “You forget you staged a food coup with me or something?” Jet says, grinning, when Zuko gets up to ask if it’s stolen. 

And—whatever, Zuko doesn’t care, that’s not what he meant, he’s stolen plenty, himself, but he’s not about to get into it right now.

“You are the saddest damned person I know,” Jet tells him a while after they’ve started drinking, like it’s a compliment. They’re standing close enough that Zuko can feel the heat radiating off him. When Jet lifts his free hand to the back of Zuko’s neck, it’s with such supreme confidence that Zuko will let him pull him in—which, historically, Zuko has always done, so he supposes it’s not without precedent. “Gonna find out what makes you shut your brain off.”

“You already do that pretty well,” Zuko admits once they’ve parted, tongue thick with drink, and pushes himself forward until their bodies are flush. He’s privately pleased when Jet grins. 

This is the kind of honesty that usually gets him what he wants.

* * *

Life goes on, as it does. 

Zuko sees someone on a street corner raving about the war, and then he sees them get dragged away by Dai Li agents, and he makes a mental note to sneak out sometime to practice with his dao, just in case.

Jet stands Zuko up one evening and then stops coming by the shop. Zuko bumps into him exactly once a few days later on his way to pick up food, by accident—Jet gives him a look like he’s a rabid animal and stalks off in the other direction. Zuko lets him.

 _Well, that’s done, then,_ Zuko thinks a week or so later, hauling the bedrolls out into the alleyway so he can hang them up and beat them clean with a broom handle like a peasant. He has no idea what happened, but it’s not like he wasn’t expecting this eventually. It was pretty fun while it lasted; he learned some things, he did some things. It’s probably time to move on.

It kind of aches. Maybe he’s just breathing in too much of the mattress dust.

There’s a small part of Zuko that wants to stalk up to Jet’s apartment and demand answers, but that would probably be... a lot, given how casual their arrangement was. He’s not sure he wants to be A Lot.

He has enough practice being that in other areas of his life.

  
  
  
  


Jet finally comes into the teashop after a little over two weeks of silence looking worse for wear, but he doesn’t have his weapons strapped to his back, and he sits down at a table like a customer, so Zuko decides it’s probably safe to approach.

When Zuko reaches the table, Jet greets him with a, “Yo, long time no see,” like he wasn’t the one who started it.

Zuko says, with more astonishment than is probably warranted, “Are you drunk?”

Jet glares at him. “So what if I am?”

“So nothing. It’s just that it’s still morning.”

“ _So what?_ ” Jet says again.

Zuko stands there, feeling more ridiculous by the second. “So, are you going to order?”

“I know your name’s not really Li,” Jet says, in his stupid too-damn-loud voice again, and _there_ it is. “I know you’ve been lying about that and, well, I guess you never really told me where you came from, but you probably would’ve lied about that, too.”

All the hairs on the back of Zuko’s neck stand up. He doesn’t ask how he knows. He resists the urge to look around, tries to mentally catalogue the things in his immediate line of sight that might be able to be used as a weapon if he needs it, tries to determine ways to maneuver in a tea shop with customers around, tries to battle down the immense wave of betrayal that he knows he hasn’t earned the right to feel—

“Oh, relax,” Jet says, with a clumsy hand on Zuko’s arm, and then he slumps over the table. “Your secret’s _safe_ , I don’t know who you are and I already had my big damn breakdown about it. I guess to be fair, my name’s not really Jet, either.”

Zuko stares at him, mind stuttering on the thought that, with enough force, a serving tray could probably be kicked in half to use as makeshift dao. He files that away for later. “What?”

“I mean, I’m still not anybody _important_ ,” Jet says, like it pains him. “Maybe you are, I don’t know. Stuff just happened at some point and I picked a different name and, well, you know.” 

Zuko _does_ know. “Uh, okay, well. Are you—are you ordering anything?”

“I can’t just come say hello?”

“Is that what you call it?” Zuko says, trying to get his now-unneeded burst of adrenaline under control. “Stumbling in here and yelling things about me that aren’t your business to a restaurant full of people? That’s _saying hello_?”

It’s early enough that probably all three of their other customers are still hungover from the previous night, and nobody has turned to look at them. That’s not the point. Jet says, “Come on, Li,” even though it isn’t his name, and tries to touch his arm again. Zuko swoops out of the way, furious.

“I don’t want to talk, I’m working. Get out!”

Jet, surprisingly, does. 

  
  
  


He comes back in the evening as Zuko is closing up alone, looking rumpled but extremely sober. Zuko doesn’t know how Jet knew he was working a double shift. Maybe he just guessed.

He comes in through the open window.

“That’s not unsettling at all,” Zuko grumbles, even though he himself has snuck in through plenty of windows. He himself has snuck in through _Jet’s_ window, though not uninvited.

“Hey,” Jet says, like he hasn’t heard him, as Zuko clears up empty dishes. Zuko _hates_ doing dishes—he can handle a serving tray with grace but always seems to break at least one thing in the sink, which inevitably comes out of his pay later—but he still can’t brew tea to save his life, and he was put on closing duty, so here he is. Jet goes on, “Uh, sorry about earlier.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything. He’s still furious, and furious _that_ he’s furious, because Jet’s right, and he’s basically been lying this whole time, though not specifically to Jet. Maybe it’s not completely his fault, when being who he actually is could get him killed no matter which way you slice it, but still. Who did Zuko think he was, exactly, thinking he was allowed to have some kind of—some kind of _sordid affair?_

Jet tries to follow him into the back room, and Zuko whirls around. “I’m _working_.”

“Can I take you somewhere when you’re done?” Jet says, just on the edge of desperate. “Can we talk?”

“No.”

“Li, please—” 

As Jet reaches out, Zuko swerves away, and as Zuko swerves away, ninety percent of the dishes slide off the tray and shatter on the floor. 

They both stare at the wreckage, for a moment.

Jet clears his throat. “Uh, I’ll—I’ll pay for it—”

“Do you _have any money?_ ” Zuko spits, already mourning the loss. He’d thought his stipend on his shoddy navy ship was bad, but lower ring salaries are an absolute pittance and this is going to devastate his pockets. “Do you even work anywhere?”

Jet’s eyes are wide. He looks startlingly awkward, suddenly, like the teenager he is. “I do odd jobs, I’ll find a way to pay for it.”

Zuko swears under his breath, and gives the ceramic carnage on the floor one last desperate look. “It’s fine,” he mumbles, setting the tray down and going to retrieve a broom from the back. He lets Jet follow him.

“Li,” Jet says again.

Zuko yanks the broom out of the closet. “I thought that wasn’t my name?”

“I know that wasn’t the best timing.” Jet grabs the dustpan Zuko forgot, follows him back out to the dining room. “I probably shouldn’t’ve said anything.”

Zuko frowns as he sweeps up the bits of broken teacups, frowns harder when Jet hands him the dustpan to dump the shards into the bin. He mentally braces himself. “You were right, though.”

Zuko waits, reminding himself that he might be starting to get out of practice but he can still fight, can still snap the tray with a good kick if he needs to, or the broom handle—but Jet only puts his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I know. But so were you. Guess it’s not really any of my business, right?”

Zuko says, “What?”

“I don’t wanna know where you’re from,” Jet says in a rush, “I don’t wanna know your real name. I just... I used to get real angry, you know? I guess I still do.”

Zuko does know.

“And I can get obsessed when I think I’m right,” Jet goes on, fast again like he wants to get it over with before his brain catches up with him. “I know that, Bee and Longshot talked to me about it all week, and that was the whole point of coming here, right? So I could change. So I’m trying to. So.” He shrugs. “I don’t wanna know.”

Zuko tries to wrap his mind around that, the idea that you can just decide to change. “You really don’t care?”

Jet shrugs again. “I mean, not gonna say I don’t _care,_ but what am I gonna fuckin’ do about it? I’ve seen you a whole lot since we came here and you’ve never hurt anybody. I don’t know if I’d be feeling the same way if I didn’t spend all that time with you. And anyway, I haven’t hurt anybody either, since I came here. So.” He looks like he’s bursting to say more, but doesn’t.

So, Zuko thinks. So you’ve been thinking about this for a while. So you really did do things you regret. So you really are just a teenager, like I somehow really am, despite everything. So somehow, _somehow_ , getting to know me changed your mind about something. “You said your real name isn’t Jet, either.”

“It’s not the name I was born with. It’s me enough now.”

“Why did you come here this morning?”

“I don’t know, man. I just wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t _know_ , because I’ve been screwing around with you and wanted to make triple-sure I wasn’t being stupid?” He hasn’t met Zuko’s eyes. “I already said sorry.”

Zuko stares. Jet looks around, like he’s just realized he’s in a restaurant. “It’s fine, no one else is around to hear you this this time,” Zuko says. “I have to finish cleaning up.”

“Let me help,” says Jet.

Zuko tries not to sigh too loudly. “Fine.”

As they’re giving the tables one final wipe down, Jet says, “Let me take you out.”

Zuko is very weary. “I can’t. I should go home, my Uncle is—it’s his son’s birthday today. Or, it would have been. He died a while ago.”

“Oh,” Jet says. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” says Zuko. It’s why he worked two shifts today. Zuko gathers up the cleaning supplies to haul into storage, feeling Jet’s eyes on his back. He swallows. “Uh, I can see you tomorrow, though. If you want.”

When Zuko returns to the front, Jet says, “Lying isn’t really a habit for you, huh.”

“I don’t like to do it.” It’s true. He’d never had to be anything less than upfront about who he was, before now; he’d screamed his shame and his title and his anger and his _pride_ at the world at large for most of his life, and he’d probably still be doing it if he didn’t think it might get the only person who cares about him killed.

If there was a way to be totally honest, to regain acceptance and honor and be who he was again, to feel secure that he was doing the right thing, for once, then he’d do it. He’d do it in a heartbeat.

Jet looks tired, but he smiles. “Allright, Li. See you tomorrow.”

Zuko watches him go. It isn’t his name, but it sounds good on Jet’s tongue.

  
  
  
  


Zuko isn’t really sure he deserves all the chances he’s being given.

He brings a box of sweet potato cakes he saved behind the register home. They’re Uncle’s favorite.

* * *

On an evening so similar to the wash of other evenings that have come and gone since he took refuge in Ba Sing Se, Zuko calls into the teashop, “I’m going out.” He hangs up his apron as he listens to be sure Uncle heard him, and then rushes out the door before he has to subject himself to hearing Uncle’s response.

He meets Jet in front of a fountain with the lamps out, sits down on the edge, and takes the paper-wrapped bottle of wine handed to him. He savors the warmth of the drink as it slides down his throat and hands the bottle back over, his hands itching. They watch the people milling about in front of shopping stalls and street food vendors for a while.

“I hate Ba Sing Se,” Jet says.

Zuko hums in agreement. He’d made a pact with himself at the start of the week that he was going to stop saying he hates things quite so much. So far, it hasn’t really stopped him from hating things, just from saying he does. “Food’s okay.”

“Food’s okay,” Jet agrees. “And you, you’re okay.”

It’s the least suggestive and the least weird compliment Jet’s given him since they first met on the ferry, and Zuko isn’t quite sure where to put it. “I’m okay?”

“Yeah,” Jet says, too casual, and takes another long swig from the wine bottle. He passes it back over. “This is where you also tell me you hate me less than this city.”

And that—that makes Zuko want to laugh, a little, but he hasn’t done that in so long that he isn’t sure how to without sounding like a lunatic. “Wouldn’t it be weird if I liked Ba Sing Se more than you? Considering... everything.”

He drinks as Jet wiggles his eyebrows. “So you like me?”

Maybe it’s just the pleasant burn of the wine warming him, or the bizarre urge he has to be honest about the most ridiculous things around this guy, but Zuko says, “Sure. Yeah.”

Jet pulls the wine bottle out of his hands, leans over, and kisses him. Zuko’s heart thunders for just a moment, but nobody looks over or cares. They’re in the Earth Kingdom, and here they really are just two, anonymous people doing what two people sometimes do, in public.

When they break apart, Jet drags him up by the elbow. “We’re having a not-dealing-with-stupid-serious-paranoid-shit night,” he declares. “I’ve been ordered by my gang.”

Zuko rolls his eyes at the word ‘gang.’ This guy. “What will this involve?”

“Definitely the things we normally do,” Jet says suggestively, taking another swig as he walks. He hasn’t let go of Zuko’s elbow. “Definitely those. Haven’t really thought much beyond that. Maybe there’s, like, a play or some shit going on somewhere, I see posters for those enough.”

“I like plays,” Zuko says, accepting the wine bottle back. “Good ones.”

“Oh yeah? What else do you like?”

Zuko struggles. “Lots of—lots of things.” He takes another swig from the wine bottle, and coughs.

Jet laughs at him. “Like what?”

“Why don’t you tell me what _you_ like,” Zuko says, a touch defensively. The evening crowd is getting thick enough that he feels the press of people on all sides, but he doesn’t mind as much as he probably should. Jet pulls him closer by the arm.

“You know I like you,” he says, plucking the wine bottle back out of Zuko’s hand just as he’s about to drink, laughing again at Zuko’s indignant noise. 

“I thought you didn’t know me,” Zuko says, just to be contrary.

The wine bottle gets thrust back in his space. Zuko takes it. 

“I know whoever you are right now well enough,” says Jet, like he actually believes it. “Let’s get out of here.” He reaches down and presses their palms together, threads their fingers to lead Zuko through the crowd, keeping them close.

Zuko lets him.

.

**Author's Note:**

> @madseason on tumblr, come say hello!
> 
> UPDATE: while this was intended to be a stand-alone fic, it now has its own AU continuation! Click the series “next work” link to check it out!


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